About 2,000 km from here is a country shaped like a chicken. Compared to Finland, it is about 15 times smaller and has about half the inhabitants. Just around 40 of them have moved to Finland, according to Sasa Arhar, one of the active Slovenes in Finland. What brings them here, she says, is in many cases love. According to Arhar, Slovenes are most impressed by the way the Finnish system works in general, from regulations and limits, to enjoying pure nature and peaceful lives. As a negative they count weather, and some count “cold Finns” as well.

The Spanish community in Finland is quite large, active and united. Juan José is part of it. He has been living in Finland for 24 years and what he misses the most of his home country is his family and the Mediterranean Sea, which is always missed by those who have grown up close to it.

Is it a life of glamour and comfort – or one of rootlessness and constant change? SixDegrees looks into how you enter a career in diplomacy, and what the pros and cons of the job are.

WHAT is the image that comes to mind when you hear the word “diplomat”? Someone who at one moment is mingling with a foreign country’s political elite, and at the next helps to settle a major international dispute? The reality of a diplomat’s day-to-day job may be something less glamorous, but there’s no denying the fact that the career is in many ways a unique one.

INDONESIAN Jesica Kaboel was initially shocked by the Finnish language but has since mastered it and settled in well to the Helsinki way of life. She embraces the honesty of Finns and thinks that Finland has made her a better person.